Who here believes that Spinoza had a much closer understanding of what god is than any church?

I agree that Spinoza challenged the traditional view of god and developed the god hypothesis to a much more sophisticated level, but it's still just a hypothesis. One interpretation of his work is that there is no god, as the natural world is distinct from an intelligent being. By equating the two he is just using the term 'god' for what we would call nature, with no presence of an intelligence. However, writing when he did, he could not easily say that in so many words even if he believed it.